After Midnight
by Red Bess Rackham
Summary: When Natasha can't sleep, she walks in the park near her apartment. Which works out just fine, until she thinks she might have a stalker. (Bucky/Natasha, humor, no powers AU, Oneshot)


_A/n: This fic was written for stars_inthe_sky's birthday. :D HAPPY BIRTHDAY STARS! Honestly, I had too many ideas – I wanted to do an AU and something Bucky/Nat because I know what your favorite things are. XD In the end, I went with something simple, inspired by a line I saw on this AU post. I hope you like, and that you have a most fabulous day, my dear. \o/ \o/ \o/ Major thanks to inkspire for the late night beta. ;)_

* * *

 **After Midnight**

The park had a particular kind of solitude she loved around three in the morning. On the nights when Natasha simply couldn't sleep – and there were many – it helped to seek out the darkened pathways of the park down the block.

Her apartment was mostly quiet, but there were thumps and noises from her neighbors, and the furnace clanked every time it revved up. Everything sounded louder at night and when she was restlessly trying to sleep, every creak and bump seemed even more amplified. She had thick curtains to keep the bedroom dark, but the streetlights outside bathed the living room in a pale orange light that felt strangely invasive and she could never articulate why.

Natasha cursed and threw off the covers. She padded out of the bedroom, abandoning any further attempt to sleep, and went for her coat and shoes by the door. From past experience, a thousand and one insomnia remedies later, the park was the only thing that worked.

Tall, bushy trees lined the park, blocking the oppressive orange streetlights. The fuzzy white noise of the city filtered between the leaves, the occasional distant siren reminding her she was still in the city. The soft thud of her boots on the paved paths was solid and reassuring, and there was something comforting about knowing most people were asleep as she walked.

She veered off the path into the grass and wandered aimlessly over the well-trodden sod. Come daylight, it'd be full of bikers, people playing frisbee, people reading and running and sitting. For now, it was all hers, open and quiet and full of potential.

Natasha breathed in the cool night air, long and deep. Her shoulders drooped, relaxation stealing through her to replace the evening's restlessness. She hadn't intended for these sleepless nights to become a routine, but her brain apparently had other plans.

 _Thank God for this place_ , she thought, digging her hands into her coat's deep pockets.

She spent almost an hour wandering before she walked back home. Natasha left her coat and shoes by the door, and slipped back under the covers. She pictured the open, silent park and drifted to sleep in minutes.

* * *

The first time she noticed him, she'd been coming to the park at night for a few nights a week for almost a month. She hesitated a little, surprised. Living in a quiet residential area, she hadn't actually seen another person in the park this late the entire time.

He was a shadow in the distance, walking with the same sort of easy trudge that said he had nowhere to be. She didn't want to assume the worst, but she stepped off the path anyways and crossed behind the playground before he noticed her in return.

Natasha slowed a little, moving into the shadow of some thick trees. She watched the man over her shoulder warily, but he stayed on the path and headed out of the park.

By the time she was relaxed enough to go home, she'd forgotten all about him.

* * *

He showed up again the next night.

Again Natasha gave him an incredibly wide berth and kept an eye on him. This time, he slowed and noticed her. Her heart sped up and she tensed, ready to run if he made a single movement in her direction.

 _I should've grabbed my phone_. How could she have been so stupid to have left it behind? A woman, walking in the park at three-thirty-seven in the morning, alone, without a phone –

He kept going and she exhaled, forcing her heart to stop walloping her collarbone.

Natasha left the park on the opposite side than she normally did and circled the block, keeping a careful eye for any sign of the man. When she was sure he was long gone, she slipped into the apartment building and rushed upstairs. She slammed the deadbolt into place with a satisfying _clunk_.

She didn't want to give up her nightly walks, but she also didn't want to get murdered by some random guy in a hoodie.

Natasha pressed her palms to her eyes, telling herself it was super late and she was being super paranoid. For all she knew, he lived in the area and worked a night shift. Maybe he was at a friend's house playing Call of Duty until three. There were a host of reasons to explain a guy walking through the public park at bizarre hours that didn't involve nefarious intentions.

But for all she knew, he could also totally be a psycho stalker.

* * *

Though she tried to stay away for the rest of the week and suffer through being trapped in her little apartment with painful bouts of insomnia, by Thursday, she couldn't take it anymore. She got fully dressed, pocketed a can of pepper spray that Darcy gave her when she moved to the city, grabbed her phone, and reminded herself of the intense self-defense course she'd taken with Pepper six months back.

 _Just try it, Hoodie Guy,_ she thought, shoving open the door to the apartment complex. She strode into the park, half-ready for a fight and mostly hoping Hoodie Guy would be nowhere in sight.

The park was empty and hers again, and she relished it. She sighed happily and turned her face up to the black sky, subtly stained with the city's glow. Once or twice she thought she heard a noise that had her reaching for her spray, but it turned out to be nothing.

Natasha let the city's white noise wash over her and soothe her nerves. She stopped at one of the benches by the pond for a while, staring at the sliver of moonlight reflected on the water's surface. When her eyelids drooped, she got to her feet with a sigh to head home.

And ran straight into Hoodie Guy.

"Holy shit!" She scrambled for her pepper spray and he hopped away from her, hands flying up.

"Whoa – !"

"Get back!" she yelled. Her fingers fumbled the can right out of her hands and it landed with a tinny clank on the pavement.

"Shit, I'm sorry – let me – "

He went for the can, and she wasn't going to give him the chance to use it. She wound up and socked him square in the face.

He reeled, clutching his face. "Ow - _shit!_ "

"Oh my God!" Natasha shrieked, as pain lanced through her fingers. She took a breath to scream or run or both.

" _Ow_ , my God… I didn't see you," the guy moaned. He backed away further, raising one of his hands defensively in the air. "Ow, crap, I'm sorry, _ow_."

Natasha hesitated. "Don't…don't come any closer."

"Definitely not my intention," he said, holding both hands up like she had him at gunpoint. He winced at her with one eye shut and a trickle of blood seeping out of his nose. "I seriously didn't mean to scare you – I was just walking and I wasn't watching where I was going."

"Sure, like you haven't been watching where _I_ was going?" she snapped, creating more space between them. She snatched her phone out of her coat pocket.

"What? No, no – I was trying to keep my distance so I didn't freak you out," he explained, taking a few steps back as well. "Clearly I did a good job of that, huh?"

"So you're not a crazy stalker?"

He chuckled and swiped his sleeve under his nose. "No – I swear I don't have stalker-y bone in my body."

"Then why are you out here?"

"I, ah...I don't really sleep." He shrugged and offered her a wry smile.

Natasha would've smiled at that if her shoulders weren't still up around her ears.

"Wow, you can _hit_ …" He gingerly touched his fingers to his right eye, which even in the near-dark she could see was starting to swell. "I'm really sorry, I probably scared the shit out of you…"

They stood in silence for a second, a solid twenty-five feet between them, her thumb hovering over _911_ on her phone. But something about him made her believe him.

"Look, I don't want to scare you any more than I already have," he said. "So, I'm gonna head home – the park is yours." He wiped his nose on his sleeve again and hissed. " _Damn_ , you can hit."

She kinda loved the way he was genuinely impressed with her punch. "Self-defense class," she told him.

"It was worth the money." He chuckled and started walking backwards.

Natasha eyed her pepper spray can and waited until he was little further away before she darted forward to grab it.

"And I'm really sorry I scared you!" he called. He gave her a wave and jogged down the path.

* * *

Natasha swung by the convenience store on the corner after work to grab some bread, milk, and essentials to get her through the weekend. She stared at the guy by the cooler – his stance looked familiar. When he turned around and she saw the puffy black and purple eye, she gasped.

 _Hoodie Guy._

"Oh my God!"

"Hey! It's you again." He cracked a grin that was unfairly unattractive. In the daylight, his eyes were bright and clear blue. "Good to see you when the sun's up."

"I'm so sorry," she said quickly. "I really thought you were a stalker or something."

"I don't blame you," he said, grabbing a package of powdered donuts and adding it to the pile of junk food in his arms. "I would've thought the same thing. But you gotta at least tell me – why _do_ you walk around the park at three in the morning? I know why _I_ do it – plus the park is close to my house, but..."

The corner of Natasha's lips quirked up. "Same as you, honestly."

"No kidding? Well, hello then, fellow insomniac." He stuck out his hand. "Bucky, by the way."

"Natasha." She gave his hand a shake. "I'm sorry about the eye."

"And I'm sorry I scared you, and we need to stop apologizing right now if this is going to go any further."

"Further?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Of course," Bucky replied easily. He added a small bag of chips to his arms. "Because now, see, I gotta buy you a coffee so we can trade insomnia war stories."

"Uh huh…"

"And then hopefully I'm really charming and cool, so next time I see you in the park, I can say, 'Hey Natasha, it's me Bucky, your Insomnia Buddy' and not get punched."

"I see." She suppressed the grin threatening to steal over her.

"Then _that_ way we can maybe walk around the park _together,_ and I can warn other unsuspecting insomniacs about the red terror in our neighborhood."

Natasha let out a laugh and Bucky looked adorably pleased with himself. Even more adorably, he offered to pay for her milk and bread with another sexy, wide grin. As he handed bills to the cashier, she raked her eyes over his dark hair and bruised cheek and sculpted arms...

"So I'll see you at about three a.m.?" Bucky asked, his blue eyes sparkling. "You know, there's actually this twenty-four hour diner on Trent Street, so we could go for coffee after, if you want."

"Sure," said Natasha. "But one wrong move and I'll give you a matching set." She pointed to his shiner and smirked.

"Fair enough, Natasha. If I make a wrong move with you, I deserve it."

Her cheeks warmed. They didn't cool down until well after she'd gone back to her apartment alone.

Four months later when they're dating (and going strong), Darcy maintains it's the greatest _meet cute_ she's ever heard in her life.

 **-end-**

* * *

 _A/n: Thank you for reading! Feedback is love. :D_


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